The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age – Moria Endurance Run

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (LOTR: TTA) is truly an epic game, however, it might be for the wrong reasons depending on how you see it. While the game takes you through the whole movie trilogy, which is an epic effort in itself. What makes it truly epic beyond that and anything I have played recently is the amount of fighting you will do. This game isn’t that large if you go by map size, it’s the density of the orc hordes that need to be slaughtered that makes it way bigger than it actually is. With each five to ten steps you take towards your goal, you will have a fight, which makes this title an endurance run without equal. If you are allergic to any form of grinding, or filler encounters, stay far away from LOTR: TTA! If you are not…

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Stranded: Alien Dawn – Quick Impressions

Stranded: Alien Dawn is a colony builder in the style of Rimworld that just left Early Access for its 1.0 release. It’s made by Haemimont Games and published by Frontier Foundry. This is far from a review since I have only clocked in about three hours of the game before I asked for a refund on Steam. I will explain why.

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Homefront – Korean Rage

Must be hard doing rebel stuff with your eyes covered

Homefront is Kaos Studios‘ second and final game. After the disappointing release of Homefront, THQ at the time decided to axe them. Another studio and brand are dead, in a sea of publishers looking for that sweet Call of Duty 4 money. This is a tale old as religion. Instead of focusing on what made their game good, they decided to chase trends, which in the end proved to be a futile endeavor. However, the game is not all bad, the campaign is entertaining at times, but long gone is the cool futuristic setting. Now, it’s set in a more contemporary setting with some light sci-fi stuff. Just like Frontlines: Fuel of War, Homefront has a strong multiplayer focus, but unlike Frontlines: Fuel of War, it never grabbed me as that game. It feels way too much like CoD. It also comes with added XP, leveling, and soldier kit upgrades – stuff that I don’t enjoy in an online shooter since it makes the immersion and balancing absolutely dreadful.

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Warbanners – Welcome to Difficultville

This is a weird one. I do enjoy the basics of Warbanners, I find the graphics fine, and the mechanics for the most part intriguing, however, the difficulty is just out of this world. I can appreciate that fact to a certain degree, but the older I get, the less time I have to go full autismo mode like in my younger days. With this, I mean the time it takes for a game to go from challenging to tear-out-your-hair frustrating. This usually ends up with me banging my head against a wall, until the one and only perfect strategy forms. My tolerance for that kind of gameplay is almost gone nowadays. There is a subset of gamers that love this kind of Stalingrad -esque difficulty in their games, and I salute them. Crasleen Games surely has made something for them to dig into, but for the rest of us mere mortals…

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SpellForce: Conquest of Eo – First Impressions

Conquest of Eo is a 4X spinoff of the SpellForce series, and initially, my impression was great. But as it turns out, the game seems to have some serious problems in form of difficulty. The first few hours were awesome. It felt like a nice mix between Age of Wonders and Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. I was happily building up my heroes and doing some general adventuring when something foul and smelly revealed its head. As it turns out, the circle mages, which are powerful opponents, don’t play by the same rules.

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